


in the interest of friendship

by Heather



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Loss of Virginity, Military Kink, Multi, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Secretly a Virgin, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 21:05:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5470751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/pseuds/Heather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The next edition of Webster's is going to have pictures of Jupiter underneath the words "awkward" and "tactless."</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the interest of friendship

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leupagus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leupagus/gifts).



It starts with a couch.

Caine's new place isn't exactly a dream home- it's an efficiency apartment where the bedroom is pretty much a corner of the living room, separated from the kitchen by a three-quarter bathroom with a cracked mirror and a shower stall that needs a curtain because it doesn't have a door. It's a step up from his last place, for sure, but as his last place was a tarped-in floor of an office building that was under construction, that's not saying much. 

Jupiter actually gets the feeling, as she helps him move in, that this place is kind of an extravagance for him. Caine's used to a barren cell half the size of this apartment on a spaceship, and sharing it with another person to boot. Having this much space all to himself- with stuff to put in it, even- is more than a discount splice can ever hope for. It's so beyond something he thought he could have that he'd never even thought to want it, and Jupiter suspects that he's actually getting it for her.

Which may be a factor in why she's trying to help somebody three times as strong as she is carry the ugliest (and heaviest) couch she's ever seen up four flights of stairs.

Which she has now dropped on her foot. Three times.

"You really don't have to help me," Caine says, examining her foot for damage. He squeezes it to feel for broken bones, making her jump.

"Ow," she winces, squirming a little in his grasp. "Of course I do. How would it look if you were dragging this thing up all these stairs by yourself?"

The implication Jupiter's trying to get across is _like no one in the world cares about you,_ but the one Caine seems to hear is _like you're an alien dog-man taking a leave of absence from the Legion to hang out with his girlfriend,_ because he says, "I don't think anyone's watching me that closely, Your Majesty." He rubs a soothing circle into her ankle that makes the throbbing in her toes a little easier to ignore, and she relaxes a little.

"That's not the point," Jupiter says. "I wanna help because I wanna help."

Caine gives a sage nod, which he only ever does right before he's going to make fun of her, which he does. "I'm sorry to impugn Her Majesty's charitable motives."

Jupiter lightly kicks at him. "Oh, shut up."

Caine smiles, catches her foot before it makes contact, and kisses the top of it, an inch away from her toes. A tingle starts at the site and spreads straight up her leg. 

She makes a contented noise and smiles at him. "Did you really just kiss my foot?"

"Should I not have?" he asks, and it's his double-checking-about-Earth-customs voice, like maybe human feet are sacred and he's profaning the holiness of Jupiter's toes with his lips.

"It's a little weird," she allows, "but only a little."

She's still smiling, which is probably why Caine bends over her foot and does it again.

Jupiter laughs. "Okay, is this a big thing for you?" she asks. "Like, a full-on fetish that I should know about?"

"No fetish, Your Majesty," he says, although the way his fingers are now stroking up her arch kind of makes that feel a little bit like a fib. Caine bows his head against her shin, nuzzling his nose along the inside of her calf, and she forgets to care.

Jupiter tugs at his shirt collar, pulling him up on top of her, so she can kiss his lips. (Dimly, she's aware that any other time, she would not be so up on the idea of kissing something that was just right up against her foot, but Caine has a way of making her not care about things that might be gross or weird if it means she can have more of him.)

He goes with it, bracing himself over her like he's doing a push-up, and lowers himself down just enough for his lips to brush hers. The kiss is light and brief, and Jupiter feels she can't be blamed for grabbing his head in her hands to pull him down for another, hard enough that they're narrowly spared from their teeth crashing into each other by some very quick tongue action on his part.

She moans into his mouth, running her fingers through his hair at the same time she arches her back to press most of her body up against his. His chest feels rock-solid against her breasts, and that thought urges her into pressing her hips up into his to feel where else he might be hard.

Caine pulls out of the kiss with a slight hissing noise, and for a second, he looks hungry, desperate, like he might just start ripping his clothes and hers both off right here in the hallway on this ugly-ass couch. "Jupiter," he murmurs, stroking a thumb along her cheek before he runs his hand into her hair, and the way he says her name makes her want to get a head start on that clothes-ripping thing, but something about the way he looks stops her on the first button.

"What's the matter?" she asks.

He doesn't answer, just carefully climbs off of her, and Jupiter remembers that oh, yeah, they're in a public place.

"Right," she says. "Here might be a little exposed."

Caine lets out a faint laugh. "Maybe a little," he says.

Jupiter gives him a hopeful beam, and asks, "Apartment?"

Caine has the look again- slightly shifty-eyed and like he's worried about something that she can't figure out.

"No one's gonna steal this couch," she tries. "It's too heavy." It's also too ugly, but she figures that Caine probably doesn't need interior decorating tips from a pseudo-Abrasax right this second.

"I wasn't worried about the furniture," he says, and now she places the look he's giving her. It's the same one the night they met, when he let her wake up with the gun so she'd freak out a little less when he gave her bad news. Like he's got something important- Earth-shattering, even- to tell her and doesn't know where to start.

She's half-wondering if he's going to pull out a manual to reference when he decides to just come out with it. "I've never done this before."

Jupiter can feel her forehead pursing in a quizzical frown. "What, move furniture?"

For the first time since she's known him, Caine actually looks annoyed with her. "No," he says. "This." He seems to realize that being coy about it is no good for anyone, so he adds, "Any of this. What you want to do. I've never been sexually involved with anyone before."

Okay, she's not sure what the best way to react is, but she's pretty sure that giving him a gobsmacked look probably isn't high on the top of the list. She tries to school her face into a look of polite interest. "Oh."

Polite interest must look a lot like gobsmacked, because Caine seems compelled to explain, "I'm not physically incapable. I just never have."

Questions pop up in her brain like dozens of gremlins from a drop of water and start vying for dominance. The champion emerges when she can't stop herself from blurting out, "Not even...by yourself?"

Caine drops his head to not look at her, but she can still tell by the way his shoulders are shaking that he's laughing. "All right, yes, by myself," he says, struggling to hold the laughter back and doing such a piss-poor job of it that she finds herself blushing and overcome with the desire to pinch him."But- not with anyone else."

Her brain feels like a computer that has misplaced an important file it needs to run. It keeps hitting this information over and over again and erroring out. She sits up on the couch. "Really, never, anybody else?"

"Really," he says.

Jupiter's jaw starts working like crazy around words that won't form. Another gremlin pops out of her brain. "Did you ever even kiss anybody before me?"

Caine's still trying not to laugh. "That would be very difficult to do by myself," he says.

She gives in to the urge and squeezes a handful of his bicep. "Would you quit laughing at me?"

He tries, also poorly, to smother his smile. "Sorry, Your Majesty."

"So you never had, like, a space girlfriend?" she asks.

"No," Caine says. "I never felt this way about anyone before you."

Half of her wants to melt into a puddle of pure awwww at how sweet that is. The other half is still erroring out. "But- not everybody you date is about being in love, it can be- fun and practice--"

He nods. "I did think that lack of practice might be an issue."

Jupiter winces. "Not an issue," she says. "Not an issue at all. Just... kind of a surprise?" Then she frowns. "Is that why you're telling me?"

"It's important to be honest in relationships," he says, as if by rote. Like he did, in fact, read and memorize a protocol manual.

Jupiter looks at him with growing suspicion. "Did you Google how humans do relationships?"

Finally, Caine looks as caught off-guard as she feels. "Was I not supposed to?"

Jupiter buries her face in her palm with a groaning laugh. "Oh, God."

In her peripheral vision, around the edge of her fingers, she can see him starting to fidget a little on the spot. "I didn't mean to upset you--"

She quickly looks up at him, putting up surrender hands. "Not upset," she says. "I swear. Just- really, really surprised." She looks him up and down, at the chiseled, almost sculpture-like beauty of him, and can't believe no one has ever touched it before except her. "Really, _really_ nobody?"

"Really," he says. "I told you, I've never felt this way about anyone before. It just didn't seem that important."

For a second, Jupiter feels guilty. Caine pretty much saved himself for her, in a weird kind of way, and now it feels inexplicably like she cheated on him before they met. A lot of human dudes would certainly think so. "I've done it," she blurts. "Lots, even."

Caine looks confused. "All right."

"Maybe not lots," she amends, "but there's definitely been other guys. More than one of them."

This doesn't seem to clear anything up for him. "Congratulations?" he tries.

"Well, if it matters a lot to you--"

Now he gets it. "It doesn't," he says. "It wasn't a philosophical choice, Majesty. There just wasn't anyone I wanted."

"Oh." She hesitates. "And... now?"

The look he gives her is heart-meltingly sincere. "Now there's you." He touches her cheek and it's a lot like when he kissed her foot. Like he's touching something beautiful and sacred.

She leans forward to kiss him- a little more slowly and gently, in a way that feels as ridiculous as it is loving. She knows, intellectually, that she isn't going to break him, but can't help feeling like maybe she ought to be more careful with this man who's never loved anybody before.

Caine matches her gentleness, and she gets the feeling that maybe he's trying to be more careful with her, too.

It's an enormous turn-on, except for the part where she feels like maybe, just maybe, his first time with the first person he's ever been in love with shouldn't be on a ratty couch in a low-rent hallway.

Jupiter breaks off and leans her forehead against his. "Um, could we maybe table this for right now and give me a couple days to come up with something a little more special?"

She feels his breath on her cheek as he tries and fails to suppress another laugh. "If that's what Your Majesty wishes, of course."

Jupiter pinches him again, which makes him laugh again, and then he picks her up and stands her on her feet.

Caine combs his fingers through her hair, and promises, "Whenever you're ready."

She rolls her eyes a little, a fond smile trying to break out on her lips. "Isn't that my line?"

He smiles and doesn't answer, instead going back to lift up his end of the couch. She moves to her end to help.

Maybe it's because she comes from a family where every topic is open to discussion, judgment, and advice you don't want to hear, but all Jupiter can think is that she needs back-up.

\---

She goes to Stinger.

There were a lot of people she could have gone to instead- Katherine comes to mind, or even Kiza, who would have counted for the double bonus points of both knowing Caine decently well and being a girl, which would make this feel a little less weird. But Stinger comes to her readily, naturally, as the person who knows Caine the best and has gotten him through all of his important events to date. (As far as Jupiter knows, those events mainly include "that time he was court-martialed" and "talking him into a crazy-ass stunt to go save her where they both could have been killed," but those seem major enough to her.)

More than that, Stinger's a grown-up. Someone who has already navigated being a splice in a relationship- or at least, so Kiza's existence would seem to indicate. Jupiter feels a crazy need right now for someone that's like a parent, but not _her_ parent. Someone mature and experienced who's not going to start groaning at her in Russian.

Besides, it's weirdly fun and soothing to play with his bees.

She's pirouetting like an idiot in his yard with them when Stinger drives up, looks at her in total amusement, and bows his head. "Welcome back, Your Majesty."

Jupiter gives him a feeble smile, freezing in place while the bees make circles around her hands. "Hi."

"Would you like to come in?" he asks, looking as though he is deliberately not noticing that she's in a half-glissade with bees in bracelet formation.

"That sounds good," she says.

Stinger follows human etiquette protocols well. Once they're inside, he gets her both a drink and a snack, and asks all the polite questions, like "How's your family?", "How's work?", and "How is Caine keeping you these days?"

"He's great," she says, with so much enthusiasm that it sounds like a lie. "We're great. Everything's great."

"Mm," Stinger acknowledges, in that low rumbly growl that makes up half his sentences. "And, hypothetically, if it wasn't, what would it be that's troubling Your Majesty?"

"Not troubling," she insists, at least fifty percent for when Stinger tells Caine about this later. "Just, you know. Some stuff to think about."

"For instance?" he asks, a little too casually.

Too late, she realizes that Stinger must already know. Stinger's known Caine _forever_ , he's been with him since he was whatever passes for being a kid for wolf-aliens who are drafted into the military at birth, he's his Goddamn best friend. 

Her face feels hot with a blush she wishes wasn't spreading all the way down her neck, and feebly, she says, "Um... some kinda personal stuff."

Stinger nods. "Perhaps involving his relationship history? Or lack thereof."

She feels slightly less mortified that he looks awkward about coming that close to saying it.

"And some experiences he might've missed out on," she finishes lamely. "That we're... working our way up to."

"Your Majesty knows that you can discuss anything you wish to with me," Stinger says, with a gentleness like he's taking pity on her, like he knows how stupid and awkward she feels trying to talk to someone _not_ Caine about sex with Caine. That she's not having. That she really wishes she was having, which is probably really obvious to Stinger, given that she's talking to him about it and all. 

The next edition of Webster's is going to have pictures of Jupiter underneath the words "awkward" and "tactless." Stinger will probably show up under "cornered" and "embarrassed." 

Jupiter groans. "Is it okay if I just come out and say stuff?"

"That would be my preference, if Your Majesty's comfortable with it," he says.

"Caine's a virgin, I don't know how to make it not a huge letdown for him."

There. Hard part over. Now it's out there.

Stinger looks surprised. "I wouldn't have thought that'd be the source of your anxiety."

"How can it not be?" she asks. "He's waited all this time."

"I wonder if it hadn't occurred to Your Majesty that, having waited all this time, Caine doesn't have any particular expectations," he says. "That honestly, it's much more likely that it will be a letdown for you."

Jupiter makes a face. "Really not," she says. "He's great. He can get my motor running just kissing my feet, I don't even wanna know what's gonna happen when he kisses my--"

Too much. A little too much. Obviously too much. She snaps her jaw shut so hard her teeth click.

Stinger smiles. "You don't think he'll feel the same?"

No, Jupiter thinks. Because Caine is wonderful and sweet and practically perfect in every way Jupiter can think of, along with a few new ways he thought up all by himself. Whereas she's just herself, the cleaning lady in queen's clothing. She still doesn't know how she got this far with him, the idea that she could be anything more than a letdown for the next step had honestly not crossed her mind.

"He's waited all this time for someone like you," Stinger reminds her. "You couldn't disappoint him."

Jupiter lets out a tiny groan and drops her head to Stinger's kitchen table. "Couldn't he have humped and dumped a few space babes just to take the pressure off me?" 

Stinger is silent for a moment, thinking. "It's different, for lycantants," he finally says. "They don't- mate quite as indiscriminately as other species."

Jupiter lifts her head up. She can feel her eyes going wide and her jaw dropping open without any input from her. Before she can stop herself, she's already asking, "Oh, God, does Caine mate for life? If we--" She skips over trying to come up with a suitably non-awkward term for it. "--are we going to be married, in his head?"

He lets out a chuckle. "I wouldn't say he mates for life, Majesty," he says. "Not even true wolves do. It's more they'll stay with the same mate as long as is reasonably practical."

"Oh." Jupiter knows she should be relieved, but she feels a little put out. Something about _reasonably practical_ takes a little bit of the romance out.

Stinger seems to recognize the look on her face and adds, "'Reasonably practical' is different for lycantants, too, Majesty. Dead is about where a mate begins to seem impractical."

"How's that different from mating for life?" she asks.

"Well, he won't starve himself in grief," Stinger says, which makes Jupiter wonder if Kiza had to read Where The Red Fern Grows some time in school. "He might be able to interest himself in someone else eventually if you're killed."

"Oh." Jupiter hopes there isn't some lycantant girl out there in space that wants Caine's attention. Not that their last adventure had been a laugh a minute or anything, but "kidnapped by crazy not-really-an-ex-girlfriend" sounds even less fun than "kidnapped by crazy royalty with serious Oedipal issues." (In hindsight, she's not even sure if that description is specific enough to distinguish one Abrasax from another.)

"It's going to be fine, Your Majesty," Stinger says. "You'll manage. You'll more than manage."

"You got any bright ideas on how I'm gonna do that?" she asks.

He goes silent again.

"Um." Jupiter fidgets. "You don't have to draw me a chart or anything, I can--"

"Bring him here next week," Stinger says. "I'll take care of it."

The weird thing is, Jupiter believes him.

She believes him hard enough that she doesn't even ask what that means.

She has a feeling she knows.

\---

She frames it to Caine as surprise hanging out with Stinger, but that pretense lasts about half the drive there before she's convinced that he already has her all figured out.

He looks half-nervous, half like he's reassuring himself. Like he's been counting down to this in his head and it's scary, but he knows that everything's going to be all right.

Jupiter would be jealous, but she kind of feels reassured by the idea, too.It's intimidating, the thought of trying to deflower Caine all on her own, trying to make this good when she loves him but still barely knows him. She's not even sure what kind of anatomy she's going to find when she takes his clothes off; better to do that when there's somebody there that isn't going to be even a little surprised.

They're not talking while he drives, which seems like it should feel ominous, but every time she starts to think that maybe he's freaking out after all, Caine looks back at her with a small smile, or reaches over to massage the back of her neck, or to hold her hand. At one point, he even pushes himself by running fingers up and down her thigh, and Jupiter almost decides damn the plans, pull over and go the rest of the way up now, soldier. But then she feels the slight tremble to his fingers, hears a slight hitch in his breath, and decides to emulate his militant discipline until they arrive at their destination.

When they do, Stinger's already waiting for them.

Confirming her suspicions that everybody's worked out what's going to happen before they even get started, they don't bother talking.

They're barely in the door before Stinger's standing still watching them, putting a hand on Caine's shoulder like a brace to hold him up and carry him through. The look they're exchanging is not like lovers, or father and son, or best friends, or anything Jupiter might've expected of these two people going into this crazy idea. They look at each other like commander and lieutenant, a superior reassuring one of the troops before going into battle. 

The effect that has is immediately obvious: Caine looks good, looks _ready,_ , looks like he's prepared to storm the beach and complete the mission, like a thousand times before. It's the quiet expression he has when he loads weapons, tests his boots, makes sure he's got all his gear, and this reappearance of the Skyjacker she fell in love with is making Jupiter hotter than anything she would've thought possible.

She guesses he can tell that, because Caine picks her up and kisses her as he walks into Stinger's living room and lies her on his couch.

The kissing is good, the kissing is easy, and the neutral territory of the setting (not her bedroom while her mother and aunt are at work while she fakes sick, and not in Caine's tiny rat trap apartment with rust stains on the wall) makes it feel a little easier, a little safer, like they're meeting somewhere in the middle. The fact that Stinger's sitting on the coffee table across from them, watching them, one hand resting soothingly on Caine's back where his wings meet, doesn't seem to register.

Jupiter runs her hands through Caine's hair and traces her fingertips over his brand while he delves his tongue into her mouth. He feels good, smells good, fucking _tastes_ good, as he settles his weight on her.

Stinger's hand slides between them, squeezing briefly at her breasts before he starts taking down buttons on Jupiter's blouse. She breaks off the kiss to moan out loud, and Caine seems to take this as an instruction, dropping his head down to bite at her hardening nipples through the fabric of her bra. Stinger grabs the band between her breasts and pulls it up so they're free, the cups bunched up near her collarbone. Caine bends his head to suck at one nipple while Stinger rubs his fingertips over the other. Jupiter squirms and oh Goddamn did she really just let out a whimper? 

Caine lets out a groan and sinks his teeth into her nipple, breathing heavy on her skin.

"Easy," Stinger murmurs huskily into Caine's ear. "You don't want to hurt her."

Caine lets it go to lave his tongue in circles around it instead.

"Good," Stinger says, massaging the back of Caine's neck, squeezing lightly at Jupiter's breast. She moans again. Stinger smiles and gently nudges Caine over so he can bend his head to her breast, too, his hand sliding down her belly to begin working the fly on her jeans. Caine's hand follows his and Stinger grabs his wrist, guiding his fingers into her panties.

Holy shit, why had they not done this sooner? Why hadn't they done this _immediately?_ Caine's fingers are sliding, a little clumsy, up inside her as Stinger rubs circles into her clit, both of them sucking her nipples like their lives depend on it.

Stinger breaks off and growls softly against Caine's neck, "Tell her what you want next," and it is in every way an order- a fucking sexy order that makes Caine's dick jump against her thigh.

Caine's fingers thrust into her a little deeper, a little harder, and he lifts his head to look at Jupiter with hungry pleading. "I want to taste you."

A choked noise is all Jupiter is capable of making, so she nods her head as vigorously as she can, rolls her hips up into his and nearly whines out loud when Stinger's fingers withdraw from her clit so he can push down her pants.

Jupiter toes her jeans off as well as she can, Stinger's hand rubbing up and down her tigh, while Caine kisses his way from her breasts to her belly, until his head is level with her cunt. He looks up at her with the pleading again. "Jupiter--"

She hooks her knees around his shoulders- careful as she can not to bend his wingfeathers, which are now tickling the back of her legs- and gives him a pleading look of her own. "Please."

Stinger soothingly massages the back of Caine's neck for a moment before tipping his head down between her legs.

It's good, it's so good, and Jupiter nearly cries with it. Caine's tongue is inside her, like he's trying to lap up her juices from the source, like he genuinely loves the taste of her just that much.

And then Stinger's tilting his head up again, touching her clit again, and whispering gruffly in Caine's ear, "Here. Taste her here."

When he does, it's all she can do not to grind her hips into his face and scream.

Jupiter's practically on another planet when she hears the sounds of fingers on metal, buckles and zippers being slid out of place, and when she looks down, Stinger's undressing Caine, freeing his wings, undoing his pants, and she reaches down to grab his hand and guide it to Caine's cock.

Stinger shoots her a look that's hard for her to read when Caine's still lapping at her clit, so Jupiter hopes she gets her message across when she squeezes Stinger's hand around him and they begin to jerk him together.

Caine stops licking her to start gasping, his face still pressed into her, and Jupiter can't help but smile.

She'd wanted it to be special. She gets the feeling it'd be hard to be more special than this.

"Inside- please," Caine whispers hoarsely, and Jupiter's not sure if he means he wants inside her or he wants Stinger inside him. She gets her answer when Caine nearly falls off the couch trying to crawl over her and reach for Stinger's belt at the same time.

Stinger catches him before he falls. "Are you sure?" He seems to be asking both of them.

Jupiter nods, and Caine gasps out another "please," and one of them picks her up, lifting her from the couch, moving her to where they can do this right.

\---

It ends with a bed.


End file.
